Skip to main content

Email Newsletters vs. Blogs

When WebMarketCentral was first launched, the plan was to offer an associated newsletter. After careful consideration, this ain't gonna happen. E-newsletters were, not so many years ago, a clever and unique idea (good newsletters anyway). Just a few short years later, email newsletters are beyond ubiquitous. Even the most laggard of sites offer one. People are sick of them. Email in-boxes are overflowing, few people are signing up, and fewer still are actually opening the newsletters they do receive.

Suzanne Falter-Barns does a great job addressing the issue of blogs vs. e-newsletters here. Blogs are more immediate, faster, easier, less formal, and with comments, more interactive.

In the case of WebMarketCentral, I thought about what my newsletter would include if I wrote one: a link to my latest blog posting, e-commerce news and Web marketing news headlines, a sponsor or two, and some humor. Since pretty much all of that is already available on the site -- generally with RSS feeds as well -- I decided, instead of writing a newsletter every week, I would offer a build-your-own-newsletter capability on the site. It won't have an elegant format, but it will get the job done. And it won't clutter up your in-box.

Oh, and another highly useful marketing site: Mike's Marketing Tools offers an excellent search engine rank checking tool that lets you quickly and easily see how well your site shows up, for any search term you specify, on 10 leading search engines. Very slick.

*****

Terms: newsletter marketing, blogging, Mike's Marketing Tools, search engine position check, search engine rank check, Web marketing news

The Web marketing resource portal: WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Mike Bannan: mike@digitalrdm.com

RSS feed

Comments

Anonymous said…
Think that will drive you some extra traffic?
Anonymous said…
I beg to disagree about the important of a newsletter.

The weakness of blogs is that you have to be almost famous to get any good amount of traffic. You've got to be writing constantly to get any search engine traffic.

With direct email, you're in control of staying in touch with people and inviting them back to your site.

I do agree that newsletters may be on the decline. However, it's important to keep ones options open.

All Time Greats

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all!

You Know What Time It Is

It Is Almost Time To Say

Happy 4th of July

Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEM

Search engine marketing (SEM) is one of the fastest-growing categories in all of advertising, because it is both measurable and logical: present your ads when people are searching for what you're selling. A well-crafted search marketing program can provide not only broad brand exposure at a very reasonable cost (with CPMs of $10 or less), but also high-ROI lead generation. As with any other type of advertising, however, a poorly-designed campaign will be a disappointing waste of money. In addition to best practices in search engine marketing , the following articles and blog posts were among the best of 2007 at providing helpful guidance for creating and managing effective search marketing programs. Five Common Paid Search Mistakes That Can Sink Your Campaign by Search Engine Guide Blogger Jennifer Laycock explains how common mistakes such as "ego bidding," writing a single ad for all keywords, and directing all of your traffic to a single landing page can limit the res...